A new downtown arena “is vitally important to the long-term future, stability and competitiveness of the Senators.”
That was NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman’s take on moving the home of the Ottawa Senators to LeBreton Flats in 2017, in the midst of an ultimately failed bid to redevelop the entirety of those downtown lands.
Monday evening, the commissioner didn’t seem quite so bullish on LeBreton.
“There’s going to be a new owner and that new owner is going to figure out what makes the most sense,” Bettman said.
Indeed, he went on, look how well this franchise is turning it around, increasing ticket sales by 50 per cent, playing “meaningful games” at the end of March — all while more than 20 kilometres west of the flats in Kanata.
That 2.5 hectare parcel of land set aside for a major events centre at LeBreton “struck me as being a little small,” Bettman told reporters.
“You need parking. You want to make sure you can build the arena big enough to have all the loading docks and TV hookups that make a building really accessible.”
WATCH | The NHL’s commissioner on the LeBreton land:
Asked about the parcel of land at LeBreton Flats set aside for a potential new arena for the Ottawa Senators, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said he has questions about the size of the land, but “there are options downtown.”
Now, Bettman insisted he was in the capital Monday merely for his annual franchise visit. Sure, he caught up with the brass at the National Capital Commission (NCC) and sat down with Ottawa’s new mayor, but only to get better acquainted and keep the lines of communications open.
There were certainly no dramatic headlines from the visit. But his cool comments on LeBreton, when he has been so enthusiastic in the past about a downtown arena, are worth noting.
Bettman’s comments aren’t the only slight lobbed at LeBreton lately.
Last week Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, who insisted Monday he views LeBreton as a “great site for an arena,” pointed out other potential city-owned rink locations: Bayview Yards on the other side of Bayview station from the LeBreton site, the RCGT Park baseball stadium just east of the core, even property around the Hurdman transit hub south of the stadium.
LeBreton is “not the only option,” said the mayor, who joined the commissioner at his news conference.
Bettman agreed. He said he’s not any more or less optimistic about a LeBreton rink, but he’s aware “there are options downtown and that’s always a good thing to have. Even if the team wants to go to LeBreton, knowing that there are options will make going wherever they go easier.”
Considering that these city-owned options are even farther from the downtown core than LeBreton, it’s difficult not to consider those comments as posturing to get the team a better deal.
It might be working, at least a little.
As we know, the current Senators owners and a crew of powerful partners in the sports and events sector signed a memorandum of understanding with the NCC last year about LeBreton Flats, which was cleared in the 1960s for development that never came to fruition.
In a statement released after Monday’s meeting between Bettman and the NCC’s Tobi Nussbaum and Marc Seaman, the NCC said the men discussed the progress of the arena deal, which isn’t binding on the new owners, “including those provisions which offer flexibility to ensure the success of this bold and ambitious project.”
This “flexibility” is likely a condition in the agreement to add more LeBreton land to the rink deal with new owners.
It’s probably not much more land, but discussions on adding more property to the NCC’s major events centre parcel are undoubtedly behind Bettman’s comments on the current lands being a “bit small.”
The Kanata land play
Now, real estate does play a significant role in arena developments, especially in smaller markets where it may be harder to pay off the nine-digit price tag of a new facility.
Winnipeg Jets owners True North Sports + Entertainment, for example, have a successful development arm that helps support its sports endeavours.
That arena plus real estate one-two punch was the idea behind the ill-fated 2016 bid by the Sens and Trinity Development to redevelop the entire 29 hectares at LeBreton. Even with the massive real estate play, the deal fell apart in spectacular fashion.
With all this, there is surely a real question among the six or so groups still in the bidding to buy the Senators about whether they have enough land at LeBreton to make a go of a downtown arena (parking is a whole other story).
One aspect that is less discussed, however, is the 32 hectares of land in Kanata that comes with the sale of the team.
If the owners decide to relocate — and it is frankly hard to imagine that after spending hundreds of millions on a team, new proprietors wouldn’t take the chance to put a shiny new rink closer to the core — they’d have a big swath of valuable, available land near the highway, ready to develop.
That property is already zoned for mixed-use, and under the current political climate in the province, almost any amount of housing would likely be allowed at heights not seen before in the western suburb and under a much easier regulatory regime than the NCC.
There is a reason that experienced developers are involved in these bids.
Still, while the Kanata real estate play could be lucrative and help finance a downtown arena, it’s a long game, with profits not seen for many years or even decades.
None of this can definitively answer the question of whether a new rink will be built downtown.
But consider this: the Senators have twice worked toward a downtown home in the last decade. Those properties identified by the mayor? They’ve been there all these years, and no one’s mentioned them until very recently.
But twice, under two different owners, the Senators have chosen to bid for a new arena at LeBreton.
Would the third be the charm?
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